Four's a Crowd
by kates1304
Summary: Leo, Harry and Nikki investigate a car accident and are unsettled by the arrival of a familiar face.
1. Chapter 1

She picked her way through the wreckage of the vehicles that littered the road. Leo had beaten her there and was already working on a body in the vehicle nearest the cordon, a black Bentley that was wedged at an angle into the central reservation. She lifted her hand and greeted him with a wave that he returned, ducking out of the car to talk to her and tell her where he wanted her to go.

'What have we got?' she asked, glancing out over the sea of contorted metal and equally mangled bodies that it was her job to sort through and investigate in the hope of bringing some answers and perhaps some solace to those left behind.

'A bloody political nightmare is what we've got' was the reply, not from Leo but from the police officer standing at his side. He was a gruff man, probably in his mid to late fifties with a puce complexion and a vein that pulsed in the side of his head when he got agitated. A heart attack waiting to happen, she thought to herself as Leo gestured her to one side so that they could talk uninterrupted.

'Multi vehicle pile-up; three cars, two motorcycles. The problem is that one of the cars belonged to a high profile Nigerian diplomat, the two motorcycles were his police outriders and there are reports that witnesses heard shots being fired. Mr Kumasi has been taken to hospital to be treated for serious head injuries but his driver and bodyguard weren't so lucky. Neither were the mother and child in the Volvo' he gestured towards a crumpled wreckage further down the carriageway. In the dim light cast by two hastily erected floodlights she could see a woman's body slumped over the steering wheel and a small body lying on the road beside the car, covered up with a blanket after an unsuccessful resuscitation attempt.

'And the third car?' she asked, glancing over at a Ford Fiesta that was on its roof and appeared to be empty.

'There's a lot of blood in both the driver and the passenger seats but no sign of the driver. He was bleeding heavily and he won't have got far. The police are searching the vicinity'

'What do you want me to do?' she asked, but she already knew. She was going to get the mother and the child, and once again she was going to have to cope with the senseless loss of another life that had barely started. She could handle it this time because it was only an accident and that seemed somehow less noxious than the idea of somebody larger and stronger than the child, somebody pure evil, taking the life for reasons of his own that she prayed she would never understand. She needed to handle the mother and child because her colleagues couldn't do it. Even five years down the line she knew that Leo's wounds were still too raw, and that he would never see a mother and child without seeing Cassie and Teresa. After Hungary she didn't think that Harry would take it either. He tried to brush it off, to make out that he was over it, but she knew that he was more damaged than he would ever let on, and he'd spent enough nights in her spare room for her to know that when he did sleep he sometimes woke up crying.

'The Volvo' he replied, intentionally not referring to the horrors that waited for her inside the mangled wreckage of the car. 'Is that alright?'

'It's fine' she nodded, peering past him into the car 'The driver?'

'Yes. His bodyguard died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital and he's being transferred straight to the mortuary'

'Have you paged Harry?' she asked. She knew that Leo sometimes didn't page Harry unless they were really desperate for a third pair of hands, and she also knew that it infuriated Harry to know that he was treated with kid gloves. Special treatment was the last thing that he wanted, even though they all knew that he needed it.

'Yep but I haven't heard anything' he replied with a shrug 'Probably best if he doesn't come. One of us should enjoy our Saturday night and there'll be plenty for him to do on Monday morning' he added, trailing off as almost on cue the blue Golf pulled up at the cordon and Harry climbed out. One look at him told Nikki two things; that he couldn't perform any autopsies because nothing that he said, concluded or did would stand up in court, and that there was no way that he should have been driving. Not unless they wanted the next autopsy they conducted to be on their friend and colleague.

'Harry' she painted an awkward smile on her face, aware that in one fluid movement that Harry barely seemed to register Leo had taken the car keys from his hand and stowed them safely in his own pocket. She wasn't the only one who'd noticed the slight unsteadiness in his gait and the stench of alcohol as he approached them only confirmed her fears.

'Sorry Harry' Leo greeted him with an equally awkward smile and steered him away before a police officer could notice his inebriation and put that together with the fact that he'd arrived at the crime scene in a car 'We've wasted your time. The two of us are more than capable of taking care of what's here. You should head home and get some sleep'

'How?' Harry asked sounding genuinely intrigued 'You've just taken my car keys'

'I'll be finished here in twenty minutes. Wait in my car, I'll run you home and have a PC drop yours back to your house'

'You plan to tell a police officer that they need to take my car back to my house because I've driven drunk?' he asked, looking suitably incredulous. 'Come on Leo, that's madness and you know it. Anyway, I've only had one whiskey'

'What, in a pint glass?' Leo pulled a face that left no doubt that he didn't believe a word that Harry said. 'You're right about the PC though. I'll get Janet to come down in a cab and take my car home, I'll run you home in yours'

'There's no need'

'There's no alternative' Leo replied, spared from arguing any further by some commotion on the far side of the cordon.

'Here come the bloody spooks' a police officer muttered derisively as two large black Range Rovers with tinted windows pulled up on the other side of the cordon and several men all dressed in black jeans and tight t-shirts climbed out.

'Step away from the body, Professor Dalton' the last person to emerge from the Range Rovers bellowed authoritatively. He was the only one dressed in a suit and Nikki would swear that there was a bulge beneath his jacket that was consistent with his carrying a weapon. He looked marginally less threatening than his identikit colleagues but he still wasn't somebody that she would have wanted to mess with, but Leo stood firm.

'And you are?'

'Foreign Office. The attack on Mr Kumasi is a matter of international security. It needs handling delicately, not trampling through with size ten boots' the man gave DI Hardwick a withering glare and the ruddy faced officer spluttered but managed no intelligible reply 'You can continue to work on the other vehicles but Mr Kumasi's car and the police vehicles are now a matter for us. We've appointed our own pathologist'

'And who would that be?' Leo asked. He knew the game well enough to know that even though they'd appointed their own pathologist they would be expecting to use his facilities and his auxiliary staff to conduct the autopsy and he wanted to know who he was dealing with. He got his answer not in the form of words but in the form of somebody stepping out of a third Range Rover that had just pulled up at the cordon. Nikki only knew her by reputation and recognised her only from a photograph that Harry had on his desk of the three of them at some kind of work function or other, but she knew who she was dealing with. If there was any doubt in her mind then Harry's slack jawed gawp and the faint smile on Leo's face put paid to it. The woman walking towards her as if she owned the place was Professor Sam Ryan.


	2. Chapter 2

'Harry, Leo' she greeted them both with a smile that betrayed genuine warmth, something that faltered when she turned to the third person standing in front of her and realised that this was a stranger. Nikki had heard her friends talk fondly of Sam Ryan and of course she'd read a lot of her papers over the years, but she knew that Harry and Leo hadn't really seen her since she'd left for Ireland and that they kept in touch only with the occasional email. Based on their facial expressions she would wager that they knew nothing of her being back in England until now. 'Long time no see'

'Indeed. The last time was...' Leo started, then faltered when he realised that the last time he'd seen Sam was when she'd dropped by to offer her condolences after Cassie and Teresa's deaths and he'd ended up bawling into her shoulder. There were some things that he preferred to forget and some memories that he didn't want Harry and Nikki knowing about.

'2005' she replied smoothly. He could see from her face that she remembered the incident too, and that she knew him well enough to know that he wasn't going to want to discuss it in this, or any other, setting. 'I hear you're living with Janet Mander. I worked with her on a couple of cases. She's very good'

'I'll let her know' he murmured, stepping aside and gesturing towards the car 'I'll let you see your crime scene' he added. He liked Sam and trusted her, but he knew that unless rules were being bent with her express permission she was a stickler for adhering to them. She was certainly not going to tolerate Harry being drunk at a crime scene so he decided that it would be in everybody's best interests to head that particular reunion off at the pass. 'Nikki, I can take the Volvo. Why don't you and Harry head off' he added, raising his eyebrows pointedly and gesturing with his head towards the cordon and their cars. For a moment he watched as she made to protest and then stopped, realising that he was protecting Harry. In recent months protecting Harry had been all that either of them had wanted to do and for that reason she set aside her own irritation and did as she was told. She caught Sam looking in askance at Leo but before he had the chance to offer some kind of inadequate explanation Harry chipped in with:

'I'm being benched for bad behaviour'

'Come on Harry' Nikki muttered, walking purposefully towards the cars, relieved when he followed her instead of continuing the conversation. He might have been in self destruct mode but he wasn't so far gone that he wanted to commit very public career suicide at a crime scene and lose his driving licence to boot. So far the only two people who'd noticed that he was drunk were his closest colleagues and his life would be immeasurably easier if it stayed that way.

They almost reached the cordon before Harry stopped in his tracks. For one hideous moment she thought that he was going to offer up some piece of profound wisdom that would make everybody in the vicinity realise that he had been drinking, but as he pointed he said nothing and as she followed his gaze she realised what he was looking at. As he started to run she ran after him because the fact remained that he was drunk and if there was a case to answer at the end of all this then any defence barrister worth his fat salary would use the fact that there was a drunk pathologist at the scene of the accident, albeit one who didn't actually touch any of the bodies, to get it thrown out of court.

'Somebody has been dragged' Harry gestured towards the thick streaks of blood across the tarmac that ended abruptly at the verge on the edge of the road. The sight of the blood had sobered him up instantly which came as a relief to Nikki because it reduced the chances of anybody else realising that he was drunk, even though she still wouldn't be letting him touch anything that mattered. 'A body has been dragged across the road from the Fiesta to the verge and then...' he trailed off, peered over the edge of the embankment that sloped steeply away to a field several feet below, then started to tramp down it, carefully picking his way through the undergrowth because he didn't know what he was about to find. Nikki followed him equally gingerly, and at the edge of the verge she was aware of Leo standing at watching, caught between calling off his inebriated colleague and letting them get on with it because he didn't want to draw attention to the situation that they were dealing with. '... Can we have some light down here? I think we've found something!'

'Young male in his late twenties' Nikki dropped to her knees and pressed her fingers against his neck, feeling her own heartbeat quicken as she felt the faint pulse beneath the thin, slightly stubbly skin. 'He's alive. Get a paramedic down here, now!' she added, finding herself swiftly bustled out of the way by paramedics.

'We think that there were two people in the car' DI Hardwick bellowed 'Can you see any sign of a second person down there?'

'No' she glanced around her, took a couple of steps to her left and then added 'There are footprints headed into the undergrowth but it's impossible to follow them far'

'So what are we dealing with?' Harwick asked, lowering his voice as he reluctantly tramped down the bank to have a look for himself and no longer needed to bellow, although he still spoke more loudly than was strictly necessary. 'Footprints dragged our man out of the wreckage? Or they both got down here under their own steam but our man lost too much blood and only got this far'

'I don't know' Nikki replied calmly 'It's impossible to tell at this stage. Forensic examination of the crime scene will tell us more and hopefully he'll wake up and be able to tell us exactly what happened'

'He and his mate left the scene of an accident. That's what happened' Hardwick replied, peering into the undergrowth as if the second person from the Ford was going to still be cowering there. They both knew that in reality the second person would be long gone. 'I'm beginning to wonder if these two aren't the source of our gunshots'

'We've yet to find any hard evidence of shots being fired' she pointed out 'Let's reserve judgement until we've completed our analysis and Professor Ryan has completed hers. For now I don't think that there's anything left for Dr Cunningham and I to do here so we're going to go'

'Fine' Hardwick replied with an air of a truculent child that seemed ludicrous on a man of over fifty. She would have stopped and told him as much but more than anything she wanted to get Harry away before is temporary lucidity wore off and the whiskey caught up with him. Giving Hardwick a weary smile she took Harry by the arm and walked purposefully up the embankment, pausing only to meet Leo's eye for a moment and take a last, curious glance at Sam Ryan.


	3. Chapter 3

'No apparent gunshot wounds' Sam murmured. She gently examined the body as Leo stood outside the car with his arms folded across his chest as he watched her work. He should really have gone over to the other vehicle and started his own work but Sam's case was the more interesting and it was always a joy to watch her work. There was something mesmerising about watching such experience and competence, and the way that she made the whole thing look easy when there were aspects of it that even he struggled with. He knew that beneath the surface Sam had her demons, and that very occasionally her turmoil bubbled to the surface, but he'd always admired the way that normally she was calm and unruffled and nothing about what she was seeing ever seemed to get to her. 'There are a number of small cuts on his face and upper body from the shattered window but no other external injuries. You mentioned that somebody heard shots being fired? There are no obvious signs that his vehicle has been shot at'

'One of our officers has been taken to hospital with a gunshot wound to the neck' Hardwick offered gruffly 'We know that somebody was firing shots, we just don't know who'

'Well I wouldn't have said that any of them have hit the car' she replied. For a couple of moments she looked around her thoughtfully, then she stood upright and crossed the tarmac to the point several metres away where the road had been showered with shattered glass. 'This is tinted. It's from the Bentley?'

'Looks that way' Leo nodded, earning a nasty look from one of the security officers who didn't appreciate his input no matter how well meaning it was.

'Why is it over here? Surely the first point of impact was here...' Sam took a couple of steps back towards the wrecked Bentley where the mangled mess of a motorcycle lay at her feet. '... It's wrong. There's no obvious impact to the rear of the car, yet the right rear passenger window has shattered and the glass suggests that it happened before the first point of impact'

'Why don't you leave that to our scene of crime boys and concentrate on what you're here for, Professor' the spook in the suit stepped forward and Leo noticed that his hand was resting on the pistol in his belt, as if he was just itching for a reason to pull it and use it. It was a gesture that he probably wasn't even aware of making but it made Leo tense. 'The body'

'There's not a lot else I can tell you until we get him back to the morgue' she replied, peeling off her gloves and putting them in her pocket. 'You'll have my report once I've conducted the post mortem'

'I don't need to impress upon you the urgency of this matter' the spook told her slightly patronisingly.

'And yet I sense that you're going to anyway'

'Mr Kumasi's life is in danger. There's a reasonably good chance that the person responsible for that is still at large, in which case we need to catch them. I don't need to tell you what would happen if Mr Kumasi were to come to any further harm while on British soil' he replied, ignoring her sarcasm in favour of making sweeping statements that to Leo's knowledge he had no real evidence to back up. He suspected that to the police and the security services it was cut and dried; they'd decided that the man from the Ford who'd made an escape across the fields was the culprit. It was a reasonable assumption to make but not one that sat well with Leo because in his experience things were rarely so simple.

'I'll get my report to you as soon as possible, but obviously I want to be thorough' she replied calmly, refusing to be riled by the fact that he was trying to make her to her job to his timeline. 'If there's nothing else gentlemen, I'll see you in the autopsy. Half past nine on Monday morning at the Thomas Lyell centre'

'Thank you Professor Ryan' the spook replied, sensing that he was beaten, and then he backed off and went to talk to the band of black clad officers who were standing behind him like waxwork soldiers who would leap into conflict at the slightest provocation.

'So, Leo' she turned and gave him a grin now that at last they were alone, away from the small minded pettiness of the officers 'Would you like me to look over the Volvo with you? Then perhaps we can get a drink and catch up. Five years is a long time'

* * *

'Tell me about her' Nikki murmured. They were lying on the sofa in her lounge, her legs hooked one arm rest and his head resting on the other. She lay with her head against his chest and he had his arms wrapped around her. To anybody that didn't know they would look like a couple but neither of them felt remotely discomforted by that. There were times, particularly considering the jobs they did and the things that they'd seen, when they both craved closeness and lately neither of them had had any third party to get it from.

'Who?' he mumbled, glancing down at her, then up at the TV where a repeat of a comedy special was drawing to a close 'Joan Rivers?'

'Don't be silly' she admonished him gently, too worried about his state of mind to show any real exasperation with him even though she was pretty sure that he was just being facetious 'Sam Ryan. Tell me about her'

'What would you like to know?' he asked, propping himself up on one arm to look at her, a weary smile crossing his face 'She's been gone five years, frankly a lot if it's a hazy memory but I'll tell you what I can'

'What's she like. I mean, she's practically a legend and yet you and Leo almost never talk about her' she replied. She'd always been slightly uneasy with the fact that their close colleague's name was never really spoken around the office except for when they were citing one of her research papers, and she'd always been curious about the woman who she's replaced. She knew that Leo was close to her and that Harry admired her almost as much as he admired Leo, but she knew nothing else.

'Well she's not a legend' he replied with a small laugh, as if the idea of it was absurd 'She's a fallible human being, just like you and I. She's good at what she does, she's dedicated and she never fails to stand up for what she believes. She's usually right, even when everybody else thinks that she's lost the plot'

'A bit like me then' she replied with a wink, well aware that the only thing that annoyed him more than her having hunches that she couldn't back up with hard evidence was that generally when she had such a hunch she was right.

'There are similarities' he conceded, sitting up stiffly and pouring another glass of wine. 'Why? You're not going to get all alpha female on us, are you? Try and fend off the interloper to protect your position in the group'

'You watch far too much Discovery Channel' she told him with a good natured sigh 'and on that note, I'm going to go to bed. It's late, I'm exhausted and you'd do yourself a favour if you slept off what you've drunk tonight'

'Alright' he nodded, not bothering to protest because he knew that she was right. He was still gazing after her as she went into her bedroom and closed the door, not that she noticed because she had her back to him.


	4. Chapter 4

When they arrived at the Thomas Lyell Centre on Monday morning, it seemed to Nikki like a different place from the one that she'd left behind in Friday afternoon. Security officers were crawling all over the place, watching the people that worked there like hawks, determined to prevent any unauthorised information being leaked to the press. That, in itself, didn't bother Nikki because they'd dealt with high profile cases before and she was used to ignoring law enforcement types who wanted to throw their weight around. What upset her more was that Sam Ryan appeared to have taken it upon herself to move herself back in. She had set up camp in Leo's office, sitting in the large, high backed leather chair behind the desk that Harry always joked made him look like he should be stroking a fluffy white cat like an early James Bond villain while Leo perched awkwardly on the sofa. He looked a little disgruntled by the situation, but also resigned, like he knew that putting up a fight would be futile.

'She doesn't waste much time' Nikki remarked as Harry ambled up alongside her. The previous morning they'd had breakfast together and after that he'd gone home. She hadn't seen him for a little short of twenty four hours and in that time she'd forgotten how dreadful he'd looked lately so when he appeared at her side she was momentarily taken aback by the sight of his sallow skin and eyes that were ringed with red and glazed over from lack of sleep. 'Making herself at home'

'This was her home for nearly a decade, Nikki' he replied calmly, refusing to rise to the bait or fall into the trap of bitching about the woman who was once one of his closest colleagues. Nikki would have loved to feel that at least one of them wasn't still completely and utterly under Sam Ryan's spell, but as she glanced up and gave a wave that Nikki knew wasn't directed at her, Harry's face split into a broad grin. For a couple of seconds he was the old Harry again, and immediately she disliked Sam Ryan even more because selfishly she'd wanted to be the one to put the smile back on Harry's face.

'Harry, I'd like you to assist me' she heard Sam announce as he pushed open the door and stepped inside. Instead of following him in as she normally would, Nikki hesitated for a moment because she was under no illusions that she wasn't welcome. She had no part to play in this reunion and she felt almost embarrassed about being there at all. She knew that if Harry or Leo knew that she felt this way then they would be mortified (and that they'd probably privately think that she was losing her marbles) but as she glanced at Sam and caught her eye, just for a second, she wondered whether insecure was exactly how the other woman wanted her to feel. 'Leo's going to work on Mr Kumasi's driver and you and I are going to work on his bodyguard'

'What about the other victims?' Harry asked. He sounded suspicious but that was because over the last few months he'd grown used to being protected as if it were for his own good. Generally when a case was high profile, especially as high profile as this one, he found himself being babysat by one of the others. He hated it with a passion but they still did it because they both privately felt that he needed protecting, from his own demons as much as anything else.

'I'm sure Doctor Alexander is more than capable' Sam replied, finally turning to Nikki and giving her a terse smile. For a couple of seconds Nikki basked in what was as close to a compliment as she thought she was ever going to get from Sam Ryan, but then she glanced down at the handful of files that Leo had pressed into her hands and realised that there were three sets of records there.

'The mother and daughter from the Volvo and one of the police motorcyclists who died in the night' Leo offered, seeing her confusion. 'Is that alright, Nikki'

'Fine' she replied slowly, feeling more pushed out than ever because while the other three were being painstakingly thorough about the two victims that the security services were keen to know about, she'd been given the grunt work. She was going to have to plough through three autopsies and when she'd finished nobody was going to care what she found because all their attentions would be focussed on the people linked to an African diplomat that none of them had even heard of before his car hit a crash barrier. There was no point in discussing it further though, so she decided to save her breath and instead she turned on her heel and walked over to her desk, making a show of rustling through her paperwork because she didn't want anybody to realise that inside she was seething had being so obviously sidelined. It was only when she heard somebody clear their throat nervously beside her that she realised that Harry had followed her, and that he had an expression of boyish bemusement on his face.

'Have you got some kind of problem?' he enquired hesitantly, perching on the edge of her desk and fiddling with a biro between his fingers. 'With Sam?'

'No, no problem' she replied, forcing a smile onto her face but she feared that it came out as more of a grimace that did nothing to convince him that she actually didn't have a problem. 'I'm fine' she added, fully aware that she didn't look or sound it. 'Why would there be?'

'Well you're...' he trailed off. He was an intelligent man, and even lost in a mire of self pity as he currently was he was still just about astute enough to realise that giving her a list of potential grievances that she might have against Sam Ryan probably wouldn't be the smartest thing he'd ever done. '... Never mind'

'Shouldn't you be with the great Professor?'

'Leo or Sam?' he asked looking faintly amused, but equally knowing the answer already. 'I told them I needed to check something on my desk and then I'd be with them'

'Well check it then' she retorted although she knew that the thing that he wanted to check on was her. She watched as he hesitated for a moment, not really believing her protestations that she was fine, and then he turned away. She was still a crisis but one that would wait until later and probably wouldn't worsen in his absence. The wrath of Sam Ryan, on the other hand, was something that he'd go out of his way to avoid.

'You're not really fine, are you?' Charlie, the mortuary assistant, asked once he was gone and they were alone. She was supposed to be analysing stomach contents but as ever she was doing more gossiping than working.

'A piece of advice' Nikki replied without glancing up from the notes that she was scribbling furiously on. 'Never meet your idols. You'll only be disappointed'


	5. Chapter 5

'I'll get the report to you in the morning. You can review it and add any comments that you think are salient, then we'll submit it to the police' Sam told him in tones that left him in little doubt that this wasn't a suggestion for him to ratify; it was a command from a woman who still considered herself to be his boss. It should have annoyed him – in truth it did annoy him, just a little bit – but the only reason he focussed on it at all was because on the other side of the cutting room he heard Nikki make a scoffing sound and mutter something that sounded a lot like "man up". Even five years on he was so used to taking orders from Sam that it was second nature to him and it was only Nikki, who hadn't been around during Sam's tenure and was therefore unused to anybody telling any of them what to do in such an imperious manner, who took issue with it.

'Fine' he muttered, glancing over at Nikki who didn't glance up from the cadaver that she was working on – the third of the day, an imbalance of resources that he knew would be infuriating her – but simply shook her head with dismay. She was annoyed with him, that much he knew. He also knew that it probably had a little to do with the fact that he was at Sam's beck and call, and a lot to do with the fact that Sam's very presence made her feel edged out, but her irritation wasn't enough to make him stand his ground with Sam. For one thing she was the lead in this case because she was the one who had been called in specifically to deal with Kumasi's men. He was just assisting which more or less made her his boss. For another thing he'd been on the wrong side of Sam often enough to know that it wasn't somewhere that he wanted to be. Nikki just as capable of making his life a misery as Sam was, but the difference was that Nikki would be pacified with a bashful smile, a nice meal and maybe a bunch of flowers. Sam, on the other hand, was capable of holding a grudge for a long time.

'Good' Sam gave a smile of satisfaction and tossed her robe in the direction of the bin in the corner 'Do you want to get some lunch? Maybe catch up…?'

'Thanks but I'm alright' he replied. The truth was that he was hungry, and that unburdening himself to Sam wouldn't have been the worst thing in the world because she was likely to give him a fair hearing whereas Nikki already seemed to have convinced herself that he was suffering from some kind of posttraumatic breakdown. 'I've got a lot of work to be getting on with'

'Fine' she shrugged casually 'I'll be in the coffee shop across the road if you change your mind in the next half hour or so'

'Thanks, Sam' he replied with a smile. He watched as he walked away, then he turned to the sink, re scrubbed his hands and put on a fresh gown, ignoring the looks of askance that Charlie kept firing in his direction. 'Need a hand, Nikki?'

'No' she replied without glancing up. She had the tone of a petulant child but he ignored it: there was room for only one temper tantrum in the cutting room, and Nikki was already having it.

'Hardly seems fair, does it' he murmured, gesturing for Charlie to leave them to it and taking her place at Nikki's left hand side, leaving her no choice but to work with him because she needed somebody to assist her.

'What doesn't?' she asked, lifting out the liver and dropping it into the kidney dish that he was holding. She did it with more force than was really necessary and in the process he was subjected to a fine spray of blood.

'That Kumasi's bodyguard and driver get three of us and these three just get you. I mean I know you're good, one of the best in fact, but even so…'

'Well nobody cares about the other victims when there's an African Diplomat involved' she replied disdainfully, confirming the suspicions that he'd spent most of the morning formulating. When she'd first flounced into the office he'd wondered what precisely about the situation wasn't pleasing her. It wasn't like her to object to being overworked but it also wasn't like her to react badly to an order just because Leo didn't issue it. It was only when they were up to their elbows in body parts and he glanced over to see Nikki working on the child alone that he realised that what was upsetting her was that two bodies were getting so much attention and the other three were getting so little.

'That's not true' he told her firmly 'It's not that nobody cares. In fact I can think of a number of people who care more about these three bodies than about Kumasi's men, but we don't have the secret service breathing down our necks about these. We can afford to take a little longer, whereas with the driver and bodyguard we need to act quickly and get it right first time. If this is a terrorist act…'

'… What make you immediately jump to the conclusion that it's a terrorist act'

'Because he's an African diplomat and shots were fired' he replied wearily 'I know it's unfair but there's a reasonably good chance that Emily, and Helen, and Dan were just collateral damage. The person that this carnage was meant for was Mr Kumasi. We need to find out who wanted to hurt him if only to stop them visiting him in hospital and finishing the job'

'So then why aren't you helping Sam with her report. With two of you on it you'd get it finished in double quick time'

'Too many cooks' he shrugged 'and I've written reports with her before: she'll get into her stride and then I might as well not be there, and if I do get a look in then she'll be back seat driving. It's easier to let her do it and add my thoughts at the end. Which also frees me up to help you with Helen'

'I don't like being patronised, Harry'

'I know. I'm not patronising you' he replied, relieved that at least she was looking at him now, even if she was clearly still very angry. 'Let me help, we'll finish up here and then I'll buy you lunch'

'You just told Sam you weren't going to eat lunch. You said that you were too busy'

'I lied' he told her in a conspiratorial whisper 'I'd just rather eat lunch with you'

'Fine' she replied, visibly mollified by his platitudes 'I'll have lunch with you, but I'm not going anywhere near anywhere that Sam Ryan is going to be'


End file.
